People News

The Cleveland Board of Education has voted unanimously to select
Ronald A. Boyd as superintendent of the city's 75,000-student
system.

The 44-year-old Mr. Boyd, whose negotiated contract was expected to
be approved by the board late last week, replaces Frederick D.
Holliday, the city's first black school superintendent, who committed
suicide last January.

Mr. Boyd, who is also black, is expected to start work in early
October. He is leaving a job with the 27,000-student Compton (Calif.)
Unified School District, where he has served as deputy
superintendent.

Senator Mark Hatfield, Republican of Oregon, has said that to ensure
stable funding for education in his home state he will vote for a state
sales tax appearing on the ballot in Oregon elections this week.

Senator Hatfield, the state's senior senator, has long opposed such
a tax, but recently told Gov. Victor G. Atiyeh that his concern for
education supersedes his opposition.

State lawmakers this summer referred the sales-tax proposal to
voters; it is scheduled to appear on the Sept. 17 ballot and has the
Governor's strong support.

The sales tax, if approved, would be the state's first and would
provide as much as $700 million annually for elementary and secondary
education.

Marilyn Russell Bittle, president of the California Teachers
Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association,
declined to attend a breakfast meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education
William J. Bennett hosted earlier this month by the San Jose Board of
Education. Mr. Bennett was in San Jose as part of his teaching trips to
schools in eight cities this month.

Ms. Bittle refused the invitation as a way of showing her support
for the San Jose Teachers Association, a cta affiliate now engaged in a
contract dispute with the board, according to Denise M. Holt, a cta
spokesman. The cta local picketed the meeting, she said.

Ms. Holt said local union officials had "taken offense" over a
statement attributed to Loye W. Miller, Mr. Bennett's press secretary.
Mr. Miller reportedly said that San Jose had been selected for the
visit because of its "success in turning around a district torn by
employee unrest and financial disaster."

"The truth of the matter," said Ms. Bittle, "is that labor relations
with teachers in that district have deteriorated significantly."

H. Ross Perot, the Texas computer magnate who led that state's
assertive school-reform commission, will be honored by the Winston
Churchill Foundation of the United States, the group announced earlier
this month.

The Winston Churchill Award, which Mr. Perot will receive next
February, is given periodically to individuals who embody such
Churchillian traits as "boldness, vigor, imagination, and courage,"
said John L. Loeb, president of the group.

Mr. Perot, who founded and is the chairman of Electronic Data
Systems Corporation, organized and participated in a 1979 mission to
rescue two of his employees held captive in Iran. Earlier, he had
underwritten a plan to free American prisoners in Vietnam.

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